This is a collection of news about border issues, particularly those seen from Arizona and regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Sources often include Mexican media. It's often interesting to see how different the view is from the south.
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Thursday, December 22, 2011

AZMEX POLICY 22-12-11

INBOX WARNINGWe have several background pieces that help give the "Big Picture" to folks not living in the SW.So clear your inbox, throw another log in the fireplace, and pour a drink.Reading materials for between football gamesShould start showing up Sat.thx

AZMEX POLICY 22 DEC 2011

Note: we can take this one to the bank, and if he follows PRI tradition, he will too.

MEXICO D.F. (Approved) .- The PRI candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, demanded that the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to review the compliance of primaries, with candidates of different political parties.

"This is to check that all candidates and candidates, we comply with what makes the law," he said, adding that as anticipated the PRI's national leader, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, seek an agreement of civility with all political forces with respect to the electorate, and that the election is given in terms of proposals and ideas, not a campaign of mud.

On the need to shield the election campaigns of the presence or influence of organized crime, the former governor of Mexico state said is to be avoided at all costs this infiltration, and said that he and all his party candidates will not accept any support in this regard .

Given the peasant sector of the PRI, the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), Peña Nieto urged the government of Felipe Calderon to intervene with additional funds to those approved by the House of Representatives to address the effects of the worst drought in Mexico has suffered in the last 70 years.

The PRI said is committed to the field, adding that it is time to demand the urgent attention of the federal government, regardless of the situation being experienced by this sector of production.

"It's a national disgrace that the Mexican countryside living, and if not addressed, famine and food crisis will be exacerbated with unfortunate consequences for our national sovereignty. These insults us and we are consuming anxiety about the future, "said Gerardo Sanchez meanwhile Garcia, president of the National Executive Committee of the CNC.

After that, said the NCC is of "congratulations" because it has special guest Enrique Peña Nieto.

"I have to tell you, my dear friend, who always saw the CNC in you the man, the politician, the statesman by which we play it, where we hope to rebuild the country.

"The CNC is always with you, because we know that the challenges facing Mexico are egregious and just a politician like you, with your temper, you can confront them forcefully. We need leaders, true leaders to restore credibility and confidence of our people, our people, "he said Sánchez García.

Just yesterday, Coldwell said of Peña Nieto: "We have the strongest candidate in years, the best positioned in the polls ... is fully capable of governing the country and has the skills that should be a politician."

After mentioning that public institutions that support the field are dismantled and detail the problems that is facing this sector, García Sánchez Peña Nieto said:

"You have a huge challenge: to reclaim our nation. Nothing can stop or distract from the important. In the CNC have a large army to support you. "

He warned: "The opponents will not stop, and we less. We are encouraged by the spirit of the Revolution and that motivates us Adelitas the heart of Mexico. "

The country's once-dominant political party is poised to make a comeback.

The candidate who lost an earlier bid has returned for another shot.

And a woman is vying to become president of a country known for machismo.

The script sounds similar to what is playing out in the United States, where Republican candidates are battling for the opportunity to run against President Barack Obama next fall.

But this battle isn't in the United States. This race is playing out in Mexico, where voters will head to the polls in July to elect a new president.

The next president of Mexico will tackle major issues, including a bloody war with drug cartels and chronic problems with poverty and joblessness.

The issues are critical, so the country's independent election office is trying to boost voter turnout, particularly among Mexicans living in the U.S. who still have close ties to their homeland.

Next year's election will mark only the second time that Mexicans living abroad will be able to vote in a presidential election. Turnout in 2006 among foreign nationals was abysmal -- not even 33,000 ballots from around the world were returned -- so officials have streamlined the process and are ramping up their campaign to increase turnout, particularly in the U.S.

The new president will be forced to grapple with chronic problems of inequality, poverty and unemployment -- issues that will resonate with Mexicans living in the U.S., said Miguel Tinker Salas, a historian at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

"This is a community that has one foot in both countries," he said. "This is a community that is transnational, that can actually have daily contact with their relatives so they are fully exposed to what is happening in Mexico. In addition, they have access to Mexican media through multiple sources."

A 'movie star' candidate

The Mexican presidential election already has generated intrigue because of the candidates who have emerged and the issues the country faces, analysts say.

The front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, has been leading in the polls by double digits, said George Grayson, a political-science professor and expert on Mexican politics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

The former governor of Mexico, the country's most populous state, "looks like a movie star" and is married to an attractive television soap-opera star, Grayson said.

Peña Nieto is also a media-savvy politician.

He has spent tens of millions of dollars on television promotions, and because he is young and handsome, his candidacy has been widely covered by Mexico's largest television networks, Grayson said.

"And so he is not only on news programs, but he's on cooking programs, children's programs, sports programs. You name it. He's been all over the media nationwide for the last year or so, and so he has incredible name recognition,' Grayson said.

If elected, Peña Nieto would return to power Mexico's once-dominant PRI party. The autocratic PRI, which many Mexicans associate with heavy bureaucracy and corruption, ruled Mexico with an iron grip for more than seven decades until 2000, when PAN candidate Vicente Fox was elected.

Since 2000, Mexico has been ruled by a member of the right-of-center party, including the current president, Felipe Calderón, who is finishing his six-year term. In Mexico, the president can only serve one term.

In 2006, Calderón defeated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a member of the left-of-center PRD party, by a razor-thin margin. Lopez Obrador, a champion of the poor, to this day maintains he was the legitimate winner of the 2006 election. He has announced he is running again, though he lags in the polls, Grayson said.

As of early December, the ruling PAN party still hadn't settled on a presidential candidate. But the favorite, Josefina Vazquez Mota, a former education secretary, could become Mexico's first female president.

Whoever wins in July will inherit a bloody government crackdown on drug cartels launched in 2006 by Calderón. More than 40,000 people have died because of the crackdown, which has rocked the country's stability to its core.

Even with the gravity of the issues, Mexicans have a lot of cynicism toward politics in their country, Tinker Salas said."In that sense, I think the turnout will be affected by that," he said.

Low international turnout

Five years ago, just 28,335 Mexicans living in the United States, and 32,632 total living abroad worldwide, cast ballots. Of those, 1,121 mail-in votes came from Arizona, according to officials from Mexico's Federal Election Institute.

That is a paltry figure, considering that, as of 2010, 11.7 million people born in Mexico live in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of those, 10.8 million are of voting age, according to an analysis of census figures by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

With 524,000 Mexicans, including 482,000 of voting age, Arizona has the fourth-largest Mexican population of any state, according to the institute. It ranks behind California, Texas and Illinois.

In 2006, Mexico's election agency spent $20 million promoting the presidential election to Mexicans living abroad, mostly on television advertisements, said Dalia Moreno Lopez, a Mexican election official who visited Phoenix recently.

Given the 32,632 who voted, that comes out to about $613 per vote.

The 2006 election was the first time Mexicans living abroad were allowed to vote without returning home, part of major election reforms aimed at making Mexico more democratic following years of voter fraud.

For the 2012 election, the Mexican election agency has two goals: to increase voter participation from abroad and spend less money, Moreno Lopez said."We are not expecting millions of voters," she said. "We are just trying to improve."

Agency officials likely have their work cut out for them if the scene at the Mexican consulate on a recent day is any indication.

At one point, a consular official stood at the front of the crowded lobby and announced that a representative from the federal election agency, known as IFE in Mexico, was waiting to assist anyone who wanted to apply for a mail-in ballot.

But most of the people, who were there waiting to apply for Mexican passports or other documents, simply did what Karen Mendez did: walked right past the election table without filling out a form. "As I was standing here, I was thinking, 'I really should' " apply for a ballot, said Mendez, who was at the consulate to apply for a Mexican passport. "But I really don't care about the elections."

Mendez, a 21-year-old community-college student who lives in Peoria, said her life is more oriented toward the United States. Originally from Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Mendez said she has been living in the U.S. for five years and is in the process of applying for citizenship. "I feel like I love Mexico, but I don't think that is going to be my future," she said. "Maybe if I was still in Mexico I would vote, but (now) I don't think so."

But Phoenix resident Irma Garcia, 62, a retired teacher from Mexico, said she never misses an election. Unlike Mendez, she applied for a mail-in ballot while at the consulate to buy a permit to drive into Mexico for the holidays."It was easy," said Garcia, who is originally from Juchitlan, in the central Mexican state of Jalisco.

Disaffected voters

Analysts say that despite the efforts of the Mexican election agency to boost voter participation from abroad, they don't expect the number to increase significantly for a variety of reasons.

"In this election, I would be surprised if more than 350,000 people voted from abroad," said Jorge Bravo, a political-science professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who is an expert on Mexican politics and Mexican migration to the U.S.

Many Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. left Mexico because they were unhappy and "disaffected politically," Bravo said.

What's more, the longer Mexicans live in the U.S., the less likely they are to care about elections in their home country, he said.

Recent arrivals are often "very, very busy" working and trying to survive in the United States and also are unlikely to vote, he said.

Many Mexicans living in the United States, however, still have relatives in Mexico, and therefore have a stake in the upcoming presidential election, he said."It's clearly going to be a big election," Bravo said.